


The River is Wide

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, POV First Person, POV Minor Character, Series Spoilers, canon references, definitely could be considered AU, did I mention this was for Halloween?, might be crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I realize now that I’ve always seen them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The River is Wide

**Author's Note:**

> Ten days ago, I decided to attempt a spooky Holmesian fic in honor of the season. This is what I came up with. My apologies. I think it's pretty safe to say that this is AU, but there's nothing explicitly to say that it couldn't be canon, either. It's certainly strange. But if you want a more classic spooky treat from me for your Halloween pleasure, I suggest you try [Hitherto Confined](http://archiveofourown.org/works/541116) .

I realize now that I’ve always seen them.  
  
I saw them regularly as a child. But I never questioned what I saw, simply accepting things as children sometimes do. It never occurred to me that others couldn’t see them, didn’t know that they were there. They looked a little different, but they were plain enough. In fact, I understood my mother’s comment about her ‘Gran being in a better place’ simply to mean that Great-Gran was much happier now that she was living with _us_. Certainly I was much happier having her around all the time. She was much more talkative and sprightly (and much, much prettier) than she’d been the last time we’d gone to visit, sitting in her wheeled chair in that horrible bad-smelling place. That Great-Gran had never watched me climb a fence, but now that she was with us, she not only cheered me on, she gave useful advice about how to keep my skirt from snagging.  
  
It wasn’t until I told my mother how much I liked having Great-Gran living with us – at the dinner table, no less – that I learned better. My mother froze. My siblings stared. And my father went dangerously red-faced. That made me freeze too, because bad things happened on the all-too-frequent occasions when he went red. To put it nicely, my father was not a pleasant man.  
  
“What nonsense is this? What have you been telling her?” he thundered.  
  
Only Great-Gran said anything – and she said it to me, not him. “Tell him I’m watching from Heaven, so it’s like I’m living with you, isn’t it,” she urged.  
  
Terrified, I stammered out the words.  
  
My father’s complexion evened out a little, and after darting a quick look at him, my mother dared speak up. “That’s a lovely thought. Did you hear that at the funeral?”  
  
“She wasn’t with us at the funeral, Helen,” my father snapped irritably. “Have you been letting her play with the Jones children again? Bunch of Welshmen, they’re a superstitious lot.”  
  
“No, no, she doesn’t play with them,” my mother assured him.  
  
It was true. I didn’t play with them, not since my father disapproved. He didn’t approve of most people. I didn’t have many friends. Neither did my siblings, or my mother.  
  
“You haven’t been filling her head with silly ideas, telling her tales, have you?” he rumbled, glaring at my older brothers and sister.  
  
“No, sir,” they answered in near-unison. From their looks and postures, I knew I was in trouble with them, which worried me almost as much as her father’s temper, and hurt more, besides.  
  
“Please,” I gulped, feeling tears of fright stinging in my eyes. I didn’t dare cry, but I wanted to. “Please, Father, isn’t Great-Gran in Heaven? Is that wrong? Did I get it wrong?”  
  
My father harrumphed, but the direct appeal to his authority turned the trick. “She’s in Heaven, all right, but that’s not the same as living here. You’re old enough to understand the difference. Don’t say anything like that again. And sit up straight.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled obediently, straightening my posture while lowering my eyes so that I stared at the table.  
  
And I didn’t say anything more, not then, not later, not least because I never saw my Great-Gran again. She was gone by the time I gathered enough courage to look up, vanished as if she’d never been there.  
  
Which she hadn’t, according to my father. And my mother looked at me oddly for days after that dinnertime conversation. My brothers made fun of me for what I’d said, out of our father’s hearing, of course. But they made fun of me for a lot of things.  
  
My sister was the worst, though. My sister, whom in those days I trusted more than anyone else in my family, who explained things to me, who seemed to understand me even when no one else did. When I tried to confess that I had seen Great-Gran, my sister pokered up worse than my mother.  
  
“That’s crazy-talk,” she hissed. “Don’t tell lies. You’ll get in trouble.”  
  
It wasn’t a lie, but I knew my sister was right, and that talking about it would get me in trouble. So I never said anything more. And I tried to stop seeing them. I knew then that I wasn’t supposed to see them.  
  
Brains are funny things, and children are remarkably adaptable. In time, I convinced myself that I wasn’t seeing them, and then I didn’t, not for a long time.  
  
Not, in fact, until I’d married and moved to the United States. To Florida, sunny and warm and far from the memories of my family. Far enough that I could leave them behind with my original name, far enough that I no longer felt haunted by the memories of them, the living or the dead.  
  
(Funnily enough, I’ve never seen them, not my mother or father or either of my two brothers, all of whom are dead now. Of course, I’ve not heard from my sister, either, not in twenty years, and as far as I know she’s still alive and living in Birmingham.)  
  
I’d been happy in my new life, with my new name. Mrs. Hudson. So wonderfully different than who I’d been. I was reasonably happy with Mr. Hudson, too. I’d loved him at first, but not strongly, and it didn’t last, but that was all right. I knew he didn’t love me, not the same way. I fell out of love with him soon enough. But he cared in his own way, and he was easy to get along with. Such a handsome man, and so kind and careful with me. A bit stern sometimes, and standoffish, but always calm. Never lost his temper, not like my father. And I understood the need to keep part of yourself private, not talk about certain things – who better? If I found myself deliberately not noticing certain things, like the irregular, unexplained absences, well, I had a lot of practice by then in not seeing what I didn’t want to. And he always came back to me. That was enough, then.  
  
So I was content - that is, until they started turning up. At first I thought it was just coincidence, or maybe too much thinking about the past. They never lasted long – maybe a single sighting, maybe as many as three, but nothing more. Then I realized that they weren’t just random appearances. They were following Mr. Hudson home. The first to stay more than a day was hazy, and the second shy, and I mostly managed to convince myself that they weren’t really there anyway. But I’d gone so long without seeing any, it was harder than I could have ever believed, making myself not see them now that I was seeing them again.  
  
Then the third followed Mr. Hudson home after one of his absences. A sweet, lovely, blue-eyed blonde slip of a girl, with something old-fashioned about her air, although her clothes were perfectly modern. She was more real than anyone I’d seen since my Great-Gran.  
  
And she looked me right in the eyes. _Saw_ me. Saw me looking at her. Saw me, and stayed.  
  
“He killed me, you know,” she told me, direct but somehow still polite, once Mr. Hudson had left for work. “Your husband. He killed those others, too, the ones here, and who knows how many before that. I don’t know why he hasn’t killed you, but you’d better watch out.”  
  
It was so much of a shock – and yet somehow not. And wasn’t that horrible, the _not-surprise_? – that I forgot all about not seeing them, not speaking to them, not acknowledging any presences. “What? How…?”  
  
“Strangled me,” the girl answered matter-of-factly, although that wasn’t the question I’d meant to ask, if I’d meant anything at all. Her appearance changed briefly, and I had a momentary glimpse of a swollen, discoloured face – her face, but horribly changed, before it switched back. “It didn’t take him long. I think he’s had a lot of practice. He certainly seemed to know what to do with my body.”  
  
“Oh God,” I murmured faintly. “What do I do?”  
  
“Run,” the girl advised.  
  
I stiffened. “That won’t stop him from killing more people, if what you’re saying is true.”  
  
The girl cocked her head, then smiled wistfully. “I knew I liked you.” She bit her lip. “He kept my shoelaces, but I don’t know how that could help you prove what he did.”  
  
“I don’t either,” I admitted. “But someone else might. Someone with experience in this sort of thing. On the right side of this sort of thing, that is.”  
  
“My side wouldn’t help matters,” the girl agreed. “Nor his.”  
  
Now I know what you’re thinking. How could I just accept the word of this girl I’d just met, so to speak? Mr. Hudson had been my husband for years, and never offered me any harm. But you don’t know them, not like I do. And I’m more observant than you give me credit for. I’d had the feeling something was going wrong with Mr. Hudson. Had it for years. And I knew that the girl wasn’t lying to me.  
  
The trouble was to prove it. Preferably without becoming a victim myself.  
  
I knew better than to go to the police, of course. No discretion, particularly in America. But a wife might hire a private detective, to investigate a husband’s occasional wanderings-off, without arousing suspicion, mightn’t she? And a private detective had to be discreet – and better yet, would report to me and only me, if he wanted to be paid.  
  
I went to the library to use the computers there, to search for a detective. The girl followed me, not saying much, but a comfort all the same. It was nice knowing I had someone else helping me with this, even if she couldn’t be much more help than she already had been.  
  
Except she was. “Him,” the girl said, pointing at one of the results on the screen. “You want him.”  
  
I blinked. The name was certainly unusual – and resonated with me in some strange fashion, too, almost like I’d seen it somewhere before. Still… “Sherlock Holmes? But he’s in London!”  
  
“Actually, he’s here.” The girl sounded dead certain, if you’ll pardon the expression. “Send him a message on his website. He’ll answer. He’s the one that can help you.” She smiled again, that wistful expression that didn’t speak of happiness at all. “I just know it.”  
  
So I did, giving him the number of a prepaid mobile phone I’d bought with cash, with strict instructions not to contact me when Mr. Hudson was likely to be about, naturally. And sure enough, within forty-eight hours I received a message in return: the address of a local Starbucks, a time, and the next day’s date, followed by a simple –SH. That was all, but that was enough.  
  
Such a change coming into my life, and I had no idea. No idea at all. Nor was I prepared for how wrong he looked, sitting there. Not just that he was altogether too thin, and much too pale, and jumpy as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs – although he was all that, of course. And he was obviously and entirely too English to fit in, particularly in Florida, which is about as non-English, non-Londoner, as it is possible to get. But that wasn’t it, either.  
  
Sherlock Holmes just looked _w _rong_._ Not like they look compared to the rest of us, although it was something akin to that, I think. He was sharp-edged and jagged and yet _echoey_ , clearly present, yet somehow not fitting in to that time and place. It hurt to watch him move, stride through the too-thick, not-thick-enough air… Oh dear, I see that you don’t follow. That’s all right. I suppose you wouldn’t, not having seen it yourself. But maybe I can explain it another way. He was like a jigsaw puzzle piece from another puzzle entirely, that just _happened_ to have been put down in this puzzle, where the shape and edges all lined up perfectly, but it still wasn’t right, wasn’t actually part of the puzzle, but just transported there and filled up the gap. Does that make any more sense?  
  
No? Well, don’t worry about it, dear. It’s not important, not now. I wasn’t the only one to see it, though, not in those days. There wasn’t a single one of them that would go within ten feet of him.  
  
So I met Sherlock, and I laid out my case. I’d done some poking around in the time between contacting him and meeting him, with help from the girl and the others, too. I had dates to give him of my husband’s disappearances, and mostly-correlating dates of the disappearances of the three I’d talked to listed in the papers, and a few more, too. It’s how I learned the girl’s name, in fact. Mary. Funny, how I hadn’t bothered to ask her, and she’d never volunteered it, either. But there she was, smiling up at me in a picture from an article about her disappearance. Such a nice young woman, a teacher, with all of her life ahead of her, until she met Mr. Hudson of course.  
  
But I’m getting off the point. I had all this information for Sherlock, but I don’t think that’s what decided him to take my case, not really. He was interested, but looking back, I think it was the fact that I noticed he didn’t like his tea that convinced him. Not that it was hard to tell; he kept making faces every time he sipped, and I’d had what Starbucks passed off as tea at that time, if you didn’t watch sharp and make sure they did it right. Properly boiling water is key, not coffee-water. You understand, of course. You’ve been ever so helpful about tea, ever since you came.  
  
Anyway, he took my case, and he managed to prove Mr. Hudson really was a serial killer, sad to say. Well, sad that he was; entirely good, that Sherlock was able to stop him. Even better, he helped make sure I got credit with the police and people, for speaking out. He _said_ he didn’t want the bother, but I think he knew that it would make things a little easier for me, with the press and all. And it meant that I got to keep all the money – my husband’s estate as well as the Crimestoppers reward.  
  
I still don’t understand entirely why he did that. He was poor as a church mouse in those days. Still was, when I moved to London. I didn’t know that then, of course. I just wanted to move back home. Mary and the others had moved on, long since. Florida didn’t suit me anymore, and I’ve always loved London. I thought it might be nice, being a landlady. And something about this house spoke to me, like I belonged here. It’s certainly a good investment, or has been. I never have been able to keep 221C rented, but that didn’t matter so much, with the boys renting 221B, along with my other investments.  
  
My boys. Oh, my boys. You should have seen John, the day he came into our lives. He had a whole passel of them following him then, almost all of them still in uniform, poor dears. Most of them were quiet enough, even protective in their own way, but there was one that just kept jabbing at poor John, trying to get his attention, and doing nothing but hurting him.  
  
And not a single one of them was bothered by Sherlock. That’s when it happened, you know. He was still just as hard to look at as ever when we first talked about renting the flat. Still _wrong_ in that odd way of his, although the edges were a little softer. But it wasn’t so bad when I showed him the flat, and when I saw him next with John, almost all of that echoey out-of-place strangeness was gone, like it had never been there. He was still a jigsaw piece from another puzzle, but the picture had shifted, and he almost made sense in where he was.  
  
…Right. I see that analogy still doesn’t make sense to you. It’s all right. You just need to understand that it was gone, whatever it was that made him so uncomfortable to them – and to you, if you’d met him before the change. He’s been fine. I know you haven’t had any trouble with him. None of you have. And there have been quite a few of you around the flat. I know you’ve noticed them, although I’ve tried to help most of them move on, when they were ready.  
  
And you said it yourself, that you still owe Sherlock, him and John both. For trying to save you. For giving others answers, and for stopping your brother. It’s why you stayed, and why I haven’t said anything about you going, before.  
  
So finish up your tea, dear, however it is that you enjoy it, since I know you’re not really here, not the way I am. And then, Soo Lin – such a lovely name, I’m glad John wrote it down in his blog – then I need you to go out and find Sherlock. I haven’t seen him since he… since he and John ran that night. Since all this horrible mix-up, with the papers saying such nasty things about him, about them both. Since he… jumped.  
  
Well. It’s killing John, the not knowing, the confusion, among other things. I know you’ve seen it. So I want you to find Sherlock, wherever he is, and bring him here if you can. I don’t care how. I’ve sent the others, too. One of you is bound to find him, eventually. He won’t understand, of course – the boy never did have any patience for the supernatural, and I certainly never tried to explain things to him – but he doesn’t have to. He simply needs to come here, and I’ll take care of the rest. Because alive or dead, Sherlock owes all of us some answers.  
  
And I intend to have them.  
  
Thank you, dear. I knew you’d understand. You’re a nice girl.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted October 31, 2012. The characters in this story are, of course, Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Soo-Lin, and a bunch of theoretical family members and others that I completely made up.


End file.
